5 Signs You're Ready to Have a Baby

Updated: September 16, 2014

One of the questions I'm most often asked when it comes to mothering is, "How did you know it was the right time to have a baby?" For those of you who find yourself asking a similar question, I want to share with you exactly how I knew it was the right time for me. Maybe after reading these five signs, you'll find that you, too, are indeed ready to have a baby after all.

I can't tell you the exact moment I felt we were ready to have a baby, but I can tell you that once you have one, making the decision to have another was, at least for us, monumentally easier. If you're ready to give up the majority of your time, energy, your sleep, a good portion of your waistline, and half of your finances to someone much smaller, much less forgiving, and, frankly, someone without any patience whatsoever, then it's true: You're ready to think about having a baby.

In other words, if you can accept any of the following five signs, let alone embrace and look forward to them, you're more than ready:

5. The thought of sleeping in two-hour increments excites you.

If you're thinking of having a baby, have your spouse startle you awake one night every two hours. Tell him to wake you either by screaming into your ear or slapping you across the face — waking up to either feels about the same as waking up to the shrill cries of a newborn. While laying in the dark dazed and confused, have your spouse hand you a backpack full of parenting books that you always swore you would read and strap it to your chest while walking around the room in circles trying to remember in your zombie-like state just what those five "S's" (from the Happiest Baby on the Block) stood for.

4. You prefer to eat all meals standing up (or in the bathroom).

If you're ready to eat all of your meals hovering over your plate near the kitchen sink and can put down your fork once every 35 seconds with a smile on your face, then you're ready to have a baby. Why? Because that is how often your baby will need something. A new fork. More milk. Less milk. New milk. The old fork. If you happen to be eating something you really enjoy — for instance cookies and/or ice cream — be prepared to eat it in the bathroom, all the while praying to the gods of Parenthood that your child isn't scaling the couch or playing with knives. The person who coined the phrase "sharing is caring," certainly wasn't a parent.

3. You agree that bodily fluids are the latest fashion accessory despite what fashion gurus say.

What's more, you don't even think twice about changing your outfit once you've donned the offending fluid accessory. After all, you don't have anything clean to change into because every single piece of clean clothing in the house is currently on its fourth cycle through the dryer. Really experienced parents, the ones who have become so hardened by parenthood, will take this a step further and actually lick said offending stain in order to determine with certainty what it is and where it came from. If you're ready to lick baby vomit on the collar of your shirt, you're ready to have a baby.

2. You laugh in the face of sheer and agonizing pain.

There is no singular pain that can bring an adult to their knees faster than stepping on a Hot Wheels, Lego, or Little People character in the dead of night. No matter how hard you try to clean up those tiny toy vagrants, one of them undoubtedly will leap out of the toy box and plant itself right beneath your bare foot when you least expect it. If you can "take it like a man," (obviously one who doesn't have children and has never experienced this kind of pain), and can carry on without waking the sleeping baby, then, yes, you're ready to have a baby.

Babies have a keen sense of awareness regarding any time you try to give 100 percent of your attention to anything that doesn't revolve around them. Try making a phone call and having to interrupt your discussion every three and a half minutes to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." Start that movie you've been wanting to watch for weeks; press pause at all the really exciting parts because that's usually when someone wakes up crying after a nightmare or wetting their bed or covered in vomit, exorcist-style. You like to read, do you? Put down your favorite piece of fiction and memorize Chicka Chicka Boom Boom because it's the only book you'll be reading for the next five months. If you're prepared to do (or not do) at least half of the things mentioned above, then you're ready to have a baby.

And here's a bonus for you:

You're ready to become that parent.

The one who in your pre-baby days you rolled your eyes at and insisted you would never become. The one who posts baby picture after baby picture to Facebook, each picture looking awfully similar to the last. So similar, it's like playing "Can You Spot The Difference" at the end of People Magazine (a magazine that you haven't read in months, despite having a subscription). The kind of parent who celebrates with a red carpet roll out, the first tooth, the first word, and the first steps of their offspring. The kind of parent who thinks they have the cutest baby in all the land because, let's face it, nothing less than cute could come from you.

If you are ready to become that parent (and trust me, we all swore we wouldn't but at one time or another we did), then Congratulations! You're ready to have a baby.